Janet Tarantino had a very rich afterlife experience during her mother’s illness.

“In April 2016, my mother had a mini stroke. She began having visions. She saw a medicine man standing at the end of her bed and there were little dogs occasionally running through her room. She saw animals on the walls and ceilings and in her bed with her. The ceiling was glowing in the color fuchsia. Unfortunately, in this world, none of us could share in what she was seeing.

One day I went into her room to check on her. When I walked up to her bed, she said, ‘I’m dying to ask you a question.’ I told her she could ask me anything. She giggled and pulled the sheet up over her mouth since she didn’t have her teeth in. I asked her what she wanted to ask me. She began mumbling to me something that I couldn’t understand.

I asked her if she was sleeping and she said she wasn’t. I asked her who I was and she said my name. I asked these things to ensure she was truly awake. She appeared to be but I wanted to make sure.

I questioned her on what she was seeing and she said, ‘I’m seeing names and numbers, numbers associated with names.’

The medicine man was dressed in a yellow robe, she said, with a hood up on his head. He had two feathers sticking up in the air. He had white paint on his face, like war paint. She later saw the same medicine man standing before her dressed in a red robe.

I believe my mother was on the edge of death and she was indeed asking questions, but was not directing them to me. I believe she was directing her questions to a spiritual being we could not see. And, she was giggling like a child and ended up covering her entire head as she giggled. I later asked her what the question was that she was wanting to ask me and she said that she couldn’t remember it.

Mother was not on hallucinogenic medicine at the time.

The Medicine Man seemed to heal mom because she is here still and 87 years old. There is no doubt in my mind that this was a near death experience as the bedside clock kept changing times even though we would keep fixing it and the television quit working in the room and we had to get a new one.

I, myself, have had three near-death experiences. I have stood with God or Jesus (I couldn’t see his face) and asked him, while we were looking down on the Earth from far in space, ‘What’s it all about?’

God or Jesus (I believe it was God) answered my questions by saying ‘Behold’ as he raised his hand from his side, palm up. Lines started being created, racing from places to places all over Earth and out into the universe. I understood these to be different dimensions he was showing me. I remember saying, ‘Ohhh, I understand. It’s all about math.’ And God/Jesus agreed. So, my mother seeing names and numbers and names associated with numbers makes sense in the spiritual world."

​Dr. Kenneth Ring writes about Better Dying Through Chemistry in The University of Heaven's blog Illuminating. Learn about this or other fascinating information about near-death, shared death, or after-death communication.

Nick had a shared psychic experience with his father as he passed away.

“My father was in the hospital slowly passing away from pancreatic cancer. He was in a medical-induced coma. I was sitting at his bedside in a room full of people. I was the only one sitting at his side and at the moment was the only one paying attention to him.

My thoughts were overcome with details on what to do with Dad’s house, belongings and finances. I was afraid everything was going to be up to me to handle. I was trying to figure out what I was going to do because there was nothing else to do except wait. The doctors had said Dad’s death was imminent.

Dad suddenly opened his eyes, lifted his head, looked up at me, and said, ‘Down the middle.’ Some people asked what he had said and others went right on talking. Dad looked at me, again, right in the eyes and said, ‘Down the middle.’ I nodded my head in agreement and he dropped his head back to the pillow.

That was the only time Dad had uttered a word to me while he was passing. Later that night, my sister and I were the only ones attending Dad. She left the room to go talk with someone. As she walked out the door, he took his last breath.”

Interested in near-death, shared-death or after-death communication? Discover The University of Heaven's blog "Illuminating".

Linda Engeseth was so moved by the beauty and intensity of her father's death experience, it took "every ounce" of the fear of dying from her.

Linda recounts the story of her father’s death:

“My father was in his eleventh year of Alzheimer’s disease. He was being cared for in a home. I was called at 3 a.m. one morning and told to come as quickly as possible because he was dying.

As I sat by his side, my father rolled over in bed, looked at me directly in the eyes and said, plain as day and as if he was perfectly lucid, ‘I’m dying, and I’m scared.’ He had not spoken that clearly in years.

Dad then laid back down. He stared at the ceiling in complete wonderment, like a child at Disneyland. He said, 'Isn’t that beautiful?’

And, then he began reaching for the ceiling with both hands and said, ‘Mamow, Mamow’ over-and-over again.

My mother (my parents were divorced) later told me that Mamow was the name my father called his grandmother when he was a child.​

Alyson G. was unable to attend the final moments of her dying father’s life, but her sister was there. According to Alyson’s sister, their father had two very lucid moments that were astounding. ​ “First, he had been in a lot of pain and in-and-out of consciousness but at one point he sat straight up in bed, turned to my mom, took her hand and said, 'I have always loved you.' This was remarkable considering my father never talked like that and they had a long and unhappy marriage.

His second lucid moment--seemingly able to leave his painful, delusional state for just a minute--was when he called to me and asked me if she could see the beautiful garden in the room. He exclaimed over-and-over, 'It’s so beautiful.' "​What made his comments so remarkable to her sister was that she did not know if he was on his medication when he said these things because she would often find his pills lying on the floor after she would administer them. But, even if he was on the medication, his final statements were far different from any other remarks or words he had said during the days’ prior.​

Michael Tymn decided to drive to California to pick up his mother, Margaret, for what turned out to be their last Thanksgiving together. Perhaps he knew, on some level, that she was not long of this world and hoped to connect with her again before she passed.

“My mother, Margaret, died in my arms the day after Thanksgiving 2003. She was 87 and suffering from severe dementia, the result of a number of strokes in preceding years. It is not what she said, but the tone in which she said it, that stands out in my memory.

We were living in Depoe Bay, Oregon and my mother was in a rest home in Berkeley, California. Even though she was not mentally competent and gave no indication she recognized me or my wife, Gina, we decided to drive down to Berkeley and bring Mom back to Oregon for Thanksgiving. We had a fairly large bedroom and were able to squeeze an extra bed into it so that we could keep an eye on Mom.

​The night before she died, Mom was jabbering away constantly. I could not make out what she was saying, as it was all gibberish, but it sounded like she was pleading with someone or arguing with someone through most of the gibberish. After we awoke that morning, Gina prepared Mom for the car trip back to Berkeley. I was in the process of carrying her from the upstairs bedroom down to the ground floor, one step at a time, walking sideways, when I saw her eyes roll back in her head and her head fall back a little. She apparently gave up the ghost at that time.

In retrospect, I think all the pleading or arguing during the night was one of two things:

1) She was pleading with deceased loved ones to help her leave the body; or 2) She was so afraid of dying that she was arguing with them, telling them that he didn’t want to leave the body.”

Perhaps Margaret was afraid, or perhaps she was arguing for just enough time to see her son the morning before her death. Communicating with the unseen is very common in the end of life as are utterances that sound like gibberish or may be confusing to loved ones.

One thing is for certain; Margaret is now free of her dementia, the restrictions of her body and any pain she may have felt. For Michael and Margaret, the synchronicity of being able to see one another before Margaret’s passing, was a beautiful gift to both of them.

The conversation Julie Geiser and her sister, Lisa, had with their mother Marlene before her death in December 2016 was quite surprising to both of them, considering prior accounts of their mother having a hard time accepting her own decline. ***“A few days before she died of long-term cancer, my mother who had been sleeping most of the time as she approached the end, was awake and became quite animated.

She said emphatically, ‘I’m admitted! I’m admitted! I’m admitted!’ a number of times. My sister and I thought, you can be admitted to a hospital, a university, a movie, and to heaven. My sister asked her, ‘To heaven?’ And my mother said ‘Yes!’

Lisa asked if my grandmother was there and my mother said ‘Yes!’ Lisa also asked about other relatives by name and my mother said ‘Yes!’

I was on the phone for this exchange as I live in Australia and my mother and sister were in Chicago. My sister knew this would be one of the last times we’d have together, so I was very lucky to be part of it, if even by phone.

I asked my mother on the phone if she would be there for me, when it’s my turn, and she said. ‘I will! I will!’

Over the next half hour, she also said, ‘It’s wonderful here. I feel good. Don’t be afraid. I’m not afraid.’

I was so happy to know that my mother, who had not been so accepting of death was making the transition to a place that appeared to me (or to her) to be welcoming. I heard excitement in her words ‘I’m admitted!’ although speech at that point was difficult.

In the months prior, I’d also felt the presence of my grandmother (her mother who died in 2001) and one night I sensed her with me and heard the words, ‘Don’t worry, she won’t be alone’ and that she would be holding my mother’s hand when the time came.

So to know that my mother saw her own mother, that she was really there for my mother at the end to help guide her, is a true blessing for me.”

Between the presence of Julie’s grandmother prior to her mother’s death, and Julie’s mother proclaiming with excitement her admittance into heaven and the peace that awaits her, Julie is given a gift of relief as she knows her mother completed her spiritual transition guided by her grandmother and will one day be there for Julie when it’s her time.

VISIONS vs. HaLUCINATIONS

Doctors, nurses, and hospice care providers all shared with me that conversations and visitations with loved ones can occur in dreams, in dream-like states or in lucid states. Medical providers also made a clear distinction between hallucinations and visions. Hallucinations are a product of medications, and do not have the flexible or transpersonal quality of visions.

Whereas when people had visions, they could speak about or with unseen figures in the room, such as deceased relatives, angels or other characters, but could also connect back to those in the room with them and be in present time and reality. However, people whose unusual perceptions were caused by medication are not able to step outside their perceptions and move easily between what they were perceiving and the literal reality shared with others in the room.

Several end-of-life researchers have written about the unique conversations with and perception of the unseen at the bedside of the dying. The figures are visible to the dying but usually not to the living and are also called “takeaway figures.”

Read more about the research and the fascinating stories related to them in Dr. Melvin Morse's Parting Visions, Maggie Callahan and Patricia Kelley's Final Gifts, John Lerma’s Into the Light and finally Osis and Haraldsson’s 1977 classic What They Saw at The Hour of Death.

You can also discover more about nearing-death awareness and shared-death experiences at www.theuniversityofheaven.com and in its blog Illuminating.

This account was shared with the Final Words Project by Jane Popkin about the last days and utterances of her fatherMorris London and her mother Pessy London.

Jane's account includes many elements common to the language of the threshold: premonitions of dying, emergence of gibberish, a deepening tranquility and peace, and synchronicities and visions connected to those who have died before us.

​"My father was 93 and lived in a nursing home.

He was very alert and oriented and suffered from end-stage congestive heart failure; he loved to talk to people all his life and was a favorite of all the staff. The month before he died, he told me that he was dreaming that my mother was sleeping in his bed next to him. (He slept in the lift chair where he could breathe more easily.)

My mother died in the same nursing home eight years earlier. He had never told me he dreamed of her before and seemed surprised how real it felt to him. The Wednesday before he died, I was visiting him, and he told me "I saw your mother sitting on the bed"--not I dreamed of your mother.

I said, 'Did this feel real to you?'

He said, 'Yes.'

That next morning I received a call from the staff that he had slipped out of his lift chair and I should come in. When I got there, he was sitting up in his wheelchair, and did not have is glasses on, he was awake and had his eyes closed. I asked him if he was okay. He said ,'Yes.'

I asked him why he had his eyes closed.

He said,' I am comfortable.'

I told him that my brother who lived out of town was planning on visiting.

He asked, 'When?’

I told him, 'In a few weeks, dad.'

He said, 'I can’t wait that long. I will not make it until then.'

I went up to the nurses’ station where the nurse had been in to see him. The nurse said, 'I think there are changes happening now.' And I agreed.

We immediately called in hospice for him. Later that day, a nurse’s aide who sat at his table for breakfast said that my dad would not eat breakfast that morning, and she asked him why and he said, 'I am dying.'

The rest of the day he slept. That night he woke up and our family was there, his speech pattern changed, and he did not seem confused--just his words were different. (I wish now I had taped him!)

There was no change in medication yet, no morphine given.I spent the night in his room by his side. He started talking in his sleep, really sounded like gibberish. I could not understand a word.

He had never done this--and he was gesturing with his hands like I have never seen him do! My dad was the youngest of 11 siblings and all of them had died before him. They all liked to talk and at family get-togethers. It was hard for anyone to get a word in!

I kept thinking that I felt like he was talking to his siblings, just how animated he was in his sleep! That was Thursday night, and the next morning he was given morphine since his breathing significantly worsened and he slept after that and never spoke or woke back up until he died early Monday morning.

His death was peaceful and he was ready. The staff told me he told them he was ready, but he knew it would be hard on me. I was by his side until he died, and I kept telling him I was ready for him to go--and I would be okay. As an aside, early Monday morning before he died, I was the only person in the room.

I kissed him good night, his breathing was very slow and irregular, but I knew he would not die when i was watching him. I lay down on the cot near his bed and fell asleep, a few minutes later something woke me up. I do not know what, but when I looked at my dad he was no longer breathing.​Eight years earlier, I was at my mom’s bedside the same way in the same nursing home at the same time of the night. She was also not responsive by that point. I also kissed her goodnight and fell asleep and a few minutes later a nurse woke me up to tell me she had passed. My mom had a stroke and could not speak the last few days of her life. The only words she said were, 'I want to go home. I want my mama.'"

References to going home emerge frequently in the accounts as do references to our mothers and fathers. Synchronicities such as the one Jane shares here are also common--especially connected to anniversary days, times of day, and locations.

Hospice professionals from Connecticut to Atlanta to San Francisco have described to me that dogs often become fiercely protective in the hours before their master dies.

“One gentleman who passed away this weekend had a very loving poodle who for many weeks was very friendly to hospice workers when they came to the home. However, on Saturday, the dog would not let any of us in the front door. The dog growled and barked and threatened to bite...It was as if the dog was marking out a territory around the man’s bedroom.

It is not unusual to see animals react in very unusual ways right before their owners die. It was as if the dog was telling us to stay away and let his owner pass away in peace--as if the animal knew something we didn’t….felt something we didn’t…”

I heard similar accounts from other hospice professionals.

Could it be as pack animals, instinct leads our dogs to protect the dying and their kin from possible predators during these final, vulnerable hours? Some folks have shared with me that their pets left behind their homes and families to die alone. Perhaps there is an instinct connected to dying alone.

Many years ago, my dog Spreckels walked away from my husband’s job site, and we never saw the dalmatian again although he was a loyal pet for 17 years.

Whatever the reasons may be, it appears that our pets may be aware of certain cues or messages that clearly communicate that death is approaching —and will let us know.

Attached find an article about Oscar “the psychic cat." He clearly is tuned into some form of communication that many of us humans still do not fully understand.

Joy B. describes her father as a 'very scientific, hard-facts-only kind of guy, a chemical engineer who loved to argue against the existence of god(s), spirits, angels, or an afterlife, and often said, 'If people need such beliefs, that is fine. I have no need of them.'

"In November 2014 he began saying he was tired of living, that the effort to stand and walk even a few steps was becoming more painful and frightening since he couldn't breathe well. He said he wanted to die, and wished we could "Just get him some pills or something". He was "just plain tired of living like this."

I began discussions with his wife Terry and doctor so we could get a plan together. On January 9, 2015 he began telling Terry that he was being visited by his deceased mother and brothers. She did not like him talking about it and wouldn't listen. I came the next day, the 10th, to give him his shower.

When I arrived at 8:00 am, he was sitting propped up in his bed as usual, but he'd taken off his oxygen tubing and had it coiled on his chest. He had a smug, knowing look on his face and his arms were crossed with an amusing sort of pride. He said "Well, today's the day. I don't need that anymore."

I smiled, pulled up a chair and asked, "What do you mean, Dad?"

He said, "I saw my brother and my mother. They came and talked to me. I'm ready to go!"

We didn't talk about it any more that day. Three days later, I came early to get him up and he was animated and talkative, like he couldn't wait to tell me some exciting news! He said "She came to me, and she held up 3 fingers." (He held up a thumb and two fingers.)

I asked "Who, Dad, who came to you? Was it your mother?"

He nodded yes with a broad smile. He went on: "She said 'This one is Bud [first of the family to die, his younger brother] and this one is your other brother [who died in 2014] and this one is YOU!' [touching his thumb]. "And she was happy that she was going to have all three of us! She looked marvelous!"

Dad got tears in his eyes while he was talking. He told me this story a couple of times and he was smiling a lot. He was very happy. A few days later, again in the early morning, he said "Oooh! They took me on quite a ride!" He said this with much drama and had a big smile. His eyes were half-open and his eyeballs were darting back and forth while he talked, like he was remembering a real experience.

He said, "They took me way out there and we saw lots of people and then they brought me back." Another time, out in the living room sitting on the couch, he motioned with his hand, making a big arch and saying, "She showed me one of those, you know what those are?"

I guessed an arch-of-triumph type thing, like with balloons, or a rainbow, and he nodded yes to both. He said, "She was making that just for me! and she looked so wonderful."

I asked if this was his mother and he nodded yes. He said, "And they all reached out their hands.." (he smiled broadly and his eyes were darting back-and-forth while remembering.)

I asked "Did you touch their hands?" and he said "OH YES! It was wonderful --their hands-- hundreds of them!" He motioned with his hands, reaching out and grasping.

And smiling all the while. Another time, motioning with his head to where Terry usually sits (she was out shopping), he said, "She was gone in the car ... so they came and took me for another ride! It was a wild one! Whew! They didn't want to bring me back but I asked them to! This time we went WAAY out there!"

Again, he talked dramatically and with big smiles, like it made him very happy to remember. "

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This account has many of the elements we have heard and seen frequently in the transcripts we have collected over the last five years: descriptions of unusual ways of moving through space, rides or trips, and the appearance of deceased loved ones. Christopher Kerr and his team at the Center of Hospice and Palliative Care have done extensive research into the dreams and visitations of the dying that resonates with the hundreds of final words from The Final Words Project. Discover more here:

Kirsten Cox shares this account of the final words of her father, Gerald Adams.

She described her dad as a kind man who made others feel important. “He always cared more about listening to what you had to say, rather than being concerned about what he wanted to say.”

Kirsten explains that her father was not religious, so the words she heard on his deathbed very much surprised her:

“My father passed away in 1998. My brother and sister had already flown down to the hospital in Florida while I was a day later in arriving. My dad was somewhat lucid when I arrived at his bedside and once I arrived, he told the nurse ‘I'm ready to go now.’

The nurse looked puzzled and told him, ‘Mr. Adams, you know we can't do that.’ My dad was on no pain medicines, and only on a mild relaxant, valium.

Shortly after I arrived, all the other family members left the room, and left me alone with my father. He looked at me and I took his hand, and he told me:

‘I was waiting for you to come, I was standing at the edge of a ring of bright light. You were way over on the other side of the ring of light and my father, and mother and brother Dean were standing on the side with me, welcoming me to come with them. When you came, I knew it was okay then and I was ready to go with them because they had been waiting for me to be ready.’

My dad’s mother, father and brother Dean had all passed before my Dad. I believe that he held on until he could see me and be with me once more before he left. It really floored me because my Dad was not known to be "religious" in nature. He said he believed in a higher power, but didn't believe in worshiping in a church. He was the most honest person I know, and he never exaggerated anything for attention, no drama, just a real down to earth kind of guy."

**** ***** ***** *****​This story has so many of the elements we have heard and recorded through FWP and also commonly appear in near-death accounts: images of light, deceased relatives waiting , a clear boundary between the living and the dead/dying , staying alive long enough to say good bye to the people who matter to us and a sense of being at peace.